September 06, 2023 posted in Food Recalls, Fraud
Since 1939, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has been helping consumers ensure the quality and authenticity of certain products through its Standards of Identity (SOI) for Food program.
Today, consumers can trust that everything from canned vegetables to jellies to fruit pies contains what the product says it presents thanks to SOIs – which are essentially an agreed-upon legal definition of what food actually is and was introduced as a means of consumer protection.
A decade ago, the U.S. Grocery Manufacturers Association estimated that food fraud cost the global food industry between $10 and $15 billion per year and the problem has only accelerated since then.
“Fraud drains an estimated $30 to $40 billion every year from the global food industry. The Consumer Brands Association claims that roughly 10 percent of commercially produced food and beverage products are affected by fraud,” wrote TraceGains content marketing specialist Denis Storey in 2020. “But these figures only point to the initial economic cost of food fraud. There are the health costs to consumers poisoned by tainted food, not to mention the cost of the reputation hit on a brand when adulteration occurs.”
